Arbeiter-Sängerbund Der Vereinigten Staaten

ARBEITER-SÄNGERBUND DER VEREINIGTEN STAATEN. Although workers’ singing societies were associated with the German American socialist movement from its beginnings in the 1860s and 1870s, it was in 1892 that the Arbeiter-Sängerbund der Nordöstlichen Staaten was formed as a central federation of these societies. It was followed in 1897 by the Arbeiter-Sängerbund des Nordwestens, centered in Chicago. Mid-Northern (Detroit) and Pacific regional organizations also existed. In the late 1920s these groups came together to form regional branches of the Arbeiter-Sängerbund der Vereinigten Staaten (Workers’ Singing Societies of the United States). In terms of numbers, these singing societies were the most important cultural organization of the German American socialists. Approximately every three years, until the Second World War, each region held a singers’ festival that could attract three to four thousand participants and a much larger audience. The repertoire for these concerts, which before World War I consisted almost solely of the songs of German Social Democracy and songs by German American socialist writers, drew more and more with time from the standard Liedertafel (song society) repertoire—Heimatlieder (homeland songs); Jägerlieder (hunting songs) and Trinklieder (drinking songs). However, although this trend came to dominate the larger national group, there were smaller local societies affiliated with the German American section of the Communist Party in the 1920s and 1930s, whose members continued to emphasize the performance of political, revolutionary workers’ songs.

Socialists involved in these singing societies viewed both their repertoire and their close connections to the socialist political movement as necessary alternatives to what they saw as bourgeois or petit bourgeois culture. As was also the case with their theatrical groups, festivals, educational clubs and schools, socialists found it imperative to break away from nonsocialist German American groups and establish a certain autonomy. With respect to singing societies, which were extremely popular among all classes of German Americans, socialists formed their own rather than join the large, more conservative Nordamerikanischer Sängerbund. In their press, socialists criticized the latter organization for its “philistinism,” its indifference to progressive ideas and important social questions, and the presence of religious and non-democratic songs in its repertoire. As an alternative to this type of cultural organization, the workers’ singing societies emphasized the singing of Freiheitslieder (freedom songs) within the context of the socialist movement, with the goals of providing alternative leisure opportunities to workers who might otherwise be attracted to the more conservative groups, and thus of winning more participants to the socialist movement. There is scattered evidence that a few singing societies required their members to join one of the parties they were connected to, but this generally does not seem to have been obligatory. However, with their active and passive members in every city with a significant German American population, the singing societies encompassed a wide variety of people beyond the narrow circles of party membership and drew them into socialist political events. This is shown most clearly by the participation of workers’ singing societies in festivals or meetings designed to raise money for the socialist press or other activities, and in turn, it was these joint performances that led to the formation of the citywide and regional federations.

Through the performance of Arbeiterlieder (workers’ songs), these socialists had two complementary purposes in view, political influence and “aesthetic education.” On the one hand, their goal was to expose social contradictions, to invest the working-class singers and audience with a sense of their rights, and to create feelings of solidarity, enthusiasm and courage. On the other hand, through the artistic experience of performing choral works, socialists hoped to create an aesthetic sensibility, a sense for the “beautiful” and for “higher ideals.” They viewed this goal as a viable function of performing music, in particular, which they hoped would then lead to moral and social improvements over the former vices of those people who had been kept down at the lowest levels of the social pyramid. That is, they viewed the singing societies and their repertoire as a means to an end, as a means of creating a desired political response, but they also saw them as a way of furthering a contemplative attitude of appreciation for art in the participants. After World War I the latter goal predominated as these singing societies became increasingly similar to nonsocialist groups and as the sense of class identification dissipated because the German American ethnic group became more assimilated into the mainstream of American society.

Poore, Carol. German-American Socialist Literature, 1865–1900. Bern: Peter Lang, 1982.